1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radiation image capturing system and a radiation image capturing method for capturing a plurality of radiation images of a subject with image capturing apparatus, and also relates to a sorting apparatus for sorting image capturing instruction information for capturing a plurality of radiation images, into a processing order, and a program for being executed in the sorting apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the medical field, there have widely been used radiation image capturing apparatus which apply a radiation to a subject and guide the radiation that has passed through the subject to a radiation conversion panel, which captures a radiation image from the radiation.
One known radiation conversion panel is a stimulable phosphor panel which stores a radiation energy representative of radiation image information in a phosphor. When the stimulable phosphor panel is irradiated with stimulating light, the phosphor emits stimulated light representative of the stored radiation image information. The stimulable phosphor panel with the radiation image information recorded therein is supplied to a reading apparatus which reads the stored radiation image information as a visible radiation image.
In sites of medical practice such as operating rooms or the like, it is necessary to read recorded radiation image information immediately from a radiation conversion panel for the purpose of quickly and appropriately treating the patient. As a radiation conversion panel which meets such a requirement, there has been developed a radiation conversion panel having a solid-state imaging device for converting a radiation directly into an electric signal or converting a radiation into visible light with a scintillator and then converting the visible light into an electric signal to read a detected radiation image.
There are available in the art various image capturing apparatus of different specifications for capturing radiation images using radiation conversion panels depending on the conditions of patients as subjects to be imaged and image capturing conditions including body regions to be imaged. For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-340326 discloses a mixed system including an upstanding image capturing apparatus and a recumbent image capturing apparatus.
A radiation conversion panel which comprises a solid-state imaging device allows radiation image information recorded therein to be read therefrom immediately after it has captured the radiation image information. When a radiation image is captured by a stimulable phosphor panel, however, the stimulable phosphor panel needs to be supplied to a reading apparatus after the radiation image has been recorded in the stimulable phosphor panel and then the recorded radiation image is read from the stimulable phosphor panel by the reading apparatus. Therefore, it takes some time until the image reading process is completed after the radiation image has been captured. In particular, if the stimulable phosphor panel is housed in a cassette, then the stimulable phosphor panel has to be removed from the cassette and supplied to the reading apparatus and then delivered to a reader in the reading apparatus.
If a system which includes a reading apparatus for reading recorded radiation image information from a stimulable phosphor panel incorporates a plurality of image capturing apparatus, then the image reading process carried out by the reading apparatus needs to be controlled in rate, making the throughput of the system lower.
Certain medical diagnostic situations require that one patient be imaged to produce a plurality of radiation images including a frontal chest image, a lateral chest image, partial limb images, etc., and also that a plurality of radiation images be captured by a plurality of different image capturing apparatus. When the patient is required to change its imaging posture greatly, or when the patient is required to move between different image capturing apparatus, or when an image capturing apparatus is required to change its settings greatly between image capturing cycles, then the overall image capturing process tends to have its efficiency greatly lowered.